We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Thomas Numprasong a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Thomas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I met my stepson when he was a little over one years old. At the time I was trying to get him to call me T-Bone which is a nickname some of my friends gave me in high school. He couldn’t say it though. Instead, he called me Temo which was his best attempt. When I was trying to think of a name for my business I wanted it to be something personal and original so Temo Foods just made sense. He is now thirteen years old and still calls me Temo.

Thomas, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I actually kind of just fell into this private chef and chocolate business. It was not my plan by any means. Long story short, I was teaching at Le Cordon Bleu back in 2017 and then all of a sudden they told us we we’re all getting laid off and that all the North American campuses we’re closing. So that was that. I didn’t work at all for a couple of months and wasn’t too sure what I was going to do next. Then my friend Emilee, who is a private chef, asked me if I’d like to assist her with a dinner party so I did. From there she ended up with too many inquiries and started passing some of them on to me so I could tackle them myself. The next thing I know that’s what I’m doing regularly and I found I enjoy it much more than working in a hotel or a restaurant which is primarily what I did for about 15 years in the food industry.

With my chocolates, I am a trained chocolatier and I learned from German and Swiss Chef’s when I was in culinary school at Johnson & Wales so that’s where I got started. However, I did not have plans to open an online chocolate shop either. Basically, I was just playing with chocolate at home one day and posted pictures on social media. Then my friends said “where can we buy these” and I said “nowhere” and they said “why not?” and I said “I don’t know.” So then I started an online chocolate shop and that was that.

Therefore, Temo Foods is a Private Chef service and an online Chocolate Shop. Yeah it’s a little strange but that’s what I’m all about; tasty food and artisan chocolates!

As far as the dinner parties go we are not so much a catering service as we are a private chef service. What does that mean? It means if you need assistance with a party of say fifty people and you’re looking for a buffet set up, you need a company that has chafing dishes, hot boxes, and enough staff to assist with a party that size. We do not offer that type of service as we are not equipped for it. However, if you’re looking for an intimate private dining experience at home for you and anywhere from one to about nine other guests that’s where we step in. Of course we cannot be everything for everyone but if you’re a fan of Thai, Italian, French, Modern American, or Japanese food we might be a good fit for you.

The online chocolate shop is a small batch business that is operated solely by me. Since there is only one chocolatier and no brick and mortar shop, I mostly make preset boxes and do not offer everything all the time as storage space is super limited, and the workforce couldn’t be any smaller. With that being said, I still manage to successfully fulfill and mail client gift boxes on a monthly basis for a couple of businesses, and do a fair amount of business for Valentines, Mothers Day, and especially Christmas. I recently fulfilled an order of two hundred and fifty boxes of four for a business to use as client gifts so with enough notice I can still manage fairly large orders on my own. Those large orders are customizable as well so the client gets to pick the flavors and colors if they’d like.

The chocolate that I use is either from France, Belgium, Switzerland, or Ecuador. It is all high quality couverture chocolate. I do not cut costs on quality ingredients and everything is made by hand and from scratch. I do not have a tempering machine.

I also recently received some very delicious peaches and pecans from Pearson Farm in Fort Valley Georgia and made a “Georgia Box” of chocolates that is composed of a Peaches & Cream White Chocolate truffle, and then my very popular Caramelized Georgia Pecan Crunch Milk Chocolate truffle. I am quite proud of both of these and I think it’s a great representation of the amazing produce Georgia has to offer. I am working on getting those up on my site soon but this heat isn’t helping!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Unless you already worked from home I would say most of us had to pivot in some way when Covid started. At the time I was primarily cooking for one family a few times a week but also doing dinner parties on the weekends. Well, that took a nose dive thanks to Covid so I ramped up my chocolate work and did manage to sell quite a bit at first. I think people were going stir crazy and having some high quality chocolates delivered to there door was a nice luxury treat. When things did not seem to be getting any better though, chocolate sales started to take a nose dive as well as people were becoming more concerned with their finances and trying to keep up the steadily rising costs of…everything! So I ended up also taking a gig teaching Baking & Pastry online while simultaneously working on getting my own business back up to par. I’m still doing this today and it’s becoming…challenging to do both to say the least!

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./

I don’t necessarily manufacture products using large machinery but I do produce my own artisan chocolates and started off in my house with a cottage foods license. However, I had to move up to a food sales establishment license and start using a commercial kitchen in order to offer shipping and sell my products to businesses which I did not realize would be the case when I started. With a cottage foods license you’re limited to what you can make and how you can get the products to your customers. Everything has to be shelf stable at room temperature and you have to have direct contact with your customers in order to sell them your products. This means you cannot ship them at all and you also can’t sell to any businesses with that license. Your customers either pick up your products from you or you can personally deliver it to them and that’s it. With a food sales establishment license you have to use a commercial kitchen so I rent one at a local church down the street. I still use my home kitchen when I am inventing new designs and flavors but once it’s time to mass produce I move over to the share kitchen. Since the kitchen is utilized by multiple businesses sometimes the scheduling can be a little tricky but luckily the kitchen manager there is pretty accommodating. With this license I can now ship in state and out of state which is absolutely necessary for my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.temofoods.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/temofoods
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/temofoods
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-numprasong-36a7018

Image Credits
Headshot and action shot credit: Kyle Reynolds Food pics: Thomas Numprasong